Valse triste, Op.44

Valse triste is one of those pieces that cost their composers so little effort and seem so insignificant at the time that they are glad to sell them for a minimal sum - only to find them becoming immensely popular and enriching the crafty publishers who bought the sole rights to them. First heard at the Finnish National Theatre in 1903 as part of the incidental music to a play by Sibelius’s brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt, Valse triste was published as a separate piece a year or so later. Before the outbreak of the First World War it had been issued in as many as sixteen different editions in arrangements for everything from military band to solo flute. Sibelius was not very happy about the situation, partly because he knew he had signed away a small fortune and partly because he felt that the work by which he was best known misrepresented the serious composer he really was.

Valse triste did, on the other hand, make his international reputation and, while it is perhaps not in the best of taste, it does have a unique and irresistibly tuneful phantom-waltz atmosphere. It was written to accompany the macabre first scene of Järnevelt’s Kuolema (Death) where Paavali is watching over his dying mother. She tells him she has been dreaming that she was at a ball. As he falls asleep, Death enters the room and she, mistaking Death for her late husband, dances a waltz with him. When Paavali wakes up his mother is dead. The music could scarcely be more appropriate to the dramatic context.

Although it was originally scored for strings only, the standard version of Valse triste – which was first performed under the composer’s direction in Helsinki in 1904 – also includes parts for flute and clarinet (as well as two horns and timpani) whose brighter colours effectively offset the eerily sombre sound of muted strings in minor harmonies.

Gerald Larner©